FORTNIGHTS - Rhizome's communal learning series is untaught and unled. Our discussion/action groups are an opportunity for people to learn about a topic by reading, discussing, and then experimenting with the ideas that grow out of our discussions.

During the 2016-17 season Rhizome DC’s Fortnights held a reading and discussion group on Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guatari and Guy Debord’s Situationist International. The 2018/19 sessions will employ an even more participatory format, which will encourage everyone to present an author or reading of her/his choice in the area of social justice. Readings are available here: https://rhizomefortnightsdc.wordpress.com/

At this meeting we will discuss the essay, “Cultivating Community Economies: Tools for Building a Liveable World” by J.K. Gibson-Graham & the Community Economies Collective. The essay comes out of the author’s Diverse Economies project in which they* contemplate the possibility of alternative forms of economy and politics outside of capitalism or socialism. To do this they “imagine ‘the economy’ differently—as something that is created in specific geographical contexts and in historically path-dependent ways.” The project “outlines a strategy for taking back the economy, for representing it in a way that dislodges the discursive dominance of capitalist economic activity and reclaims it as a contested space of representation.” To accomplish this requires a deep accounting of history and ethnography to devise a kind of taxonomy of alterative economic forms based upon a variety of alternative values and relationships such as reciprocity, gift giving, cooperative labor, and self-provisioning. [*J.K. Gibson-Graham are actually two authors publishing under a single pen name: feminist economic geographers Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson]

Improvised 24 hour musical performance by Myelin Nation & anyone who wants to join. If we play one tone per hour we can make it halfway through Harry Partch's octave!

To start things on, at 1PM on Saturday Sam Cooper will be leading anyone interested through a meditation.

Intervals of visual art by Dan Conrad.

The hope of this event is to provide an extended temporal space for creative activities, spontaneity, meaninglessness, self-creation, sleep-deprivation in order to allow for new experiences and reconceptualizations of time, sound, and being/nonbeing outside of the bounds provided by the culture's normative time allotments. Feel free to participate, to listen, to watch, to sleep, to leave, to come back.

Join us for the next installment of our series devoted to the practice of Deep Listening, as coined/taught/enacted by the late composer Pauline Oliveros. For one hour, we will focus on sound. Listening first, with an eye (ear) toward healing, toward a collective experience more than the sum of its parts. There will be vocal and percussive sound production involved at different points. The space will be available for conversation/debriefing/relaxing afterwards. All ages welcome. No prior meditation or musical experience necessary.

John Hoegberg is a guitarist and singer from Baltimore, MD. John's primary activity as a musician for the past fours years has been developing a style of guitar-and-voice songwriting that can be described as sitting somewhere between abstract and sentimental. He draws from the works of other like-minded singer-songwriters (such as David Grubbs and Richard Dawson), minimalism and the intuitive structures of free improvisation for his songs. Central to his songwriting is the usage of extended techniques that descend from his playing cross-legged, the guitar resting on his lap and the strings facing upwards. He cannot, in fact, play any other way.

Nicky Smith is a filmmaker/musician/writer based in Baltimore, MD. Latest works include Universal Precautions, a solo album of songs, and The Streets Are Hot Tonight, a 22-minute tape collage made on a Tascam 424 mkiii cooked in American chaos. New tape collage Sipper of Tea & short film Asheville Soundcheck coming soon.'

Allison Clendaniel is an interdisciplinary artist in Baltimore, MD. Her work encompasses sound, classical & extended vocal technique, performance art, movement, technology, and theatre. A versatile performer and improviser, Allison has composed and played music for voice, synthesizer, piano, computer, cello, and theremin in both solo and collaborative environments. She currently focuses her artistic attention at the intersectionality between technology and acoustic instruments. She has studied voice and movement with legendary performer and composer, Meredith Monk at the House Foundation, clowning with Globus Hystericus, and has toured extensively through North America as a teacher and performing artist.

Arthur Harrison+Amber Dunleavy - Arthur Harrison has been designing and performing on theremin for 25 years. In 1995, he set out to create an optimized version of the instrument, with an emphasis on playability and portability. Since that time, he has sold them worldwide through his company, Harrison Instruments. His joyful collaboration with Amber Dunleavy has lasted more than a decade, the two sharing a strong common interest in theremins, and performing duets on several occasions. An element in their performances place the unadorned sound of the theremins foremost, without excessive processing such as filtering, looping, and distortion.

Sandy Ewen is a sound artist, visual artist and architect who has recently relocated to NYC from Houston, TX. Ewen’s audio practice focuses on extended guitar techniques, improvisation, graphic scores and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her unique approach to guitar incorporates a wide array of implements – railroad spikes, sidewalk chalk, threaded bolts, steel wool and other items become an arsenal of abstraction. Ewen has worked extensively with film makers, dancers, poets and musicians to create films, audio recording, sound interventions and performance art. Ewen’s musical collaborations include trio Etched in the Eye, duo with Tom Carter called Spiderwebs, the trio Garden medium, and ongoing collaborations with percussionist Weasel Walter and bassist Damon Smith. For nearly ten years, Ewen has been the leader of an all-female large ensemble. The ensemble conceptualizes and performs sound and performance art, utilizing graphic and text based scores and improvisational constraints.

Jeff Carey (Baltimore) makes hardcore digital music with a joystick, a gamer keypad, and an array of strobe lights. Computer based synthesis, noise, and improvisation combined with a no-safety-net aspect of gestural control makes his music totally physical and visceral.

"He's acting on raw instinct here - he refuses the clinical approach to programming software or composing music, and strives to throw himself bodily at his machines, replacing all mechanical moving parts with human flesh, blood, and bone. In pursuit of this all-organic goal, virtually everything else is jettisoned, starting with recognisable notes or melody." -Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector

Layne Garrett is an improvising musician based in Washington DC. He works with prepared guitars, found objects, and self-built instruments. He plays in the improvising duo Weed Tree with drummer Amanda Huron, as well as in regular and irregular collaborations with a spectrum of players from across the DC and Baltimore sound universe.

Please bring a journal and pen or a laptop or other device you can write on

Wifi is available

During the workshop, we will:

-Learn about the history of obits and the current state of obits

-Share and read fun, moving, or unique obits. If you want to bring an obit to share, please do!

-Write our own obits (I'll provides some guided writing exercises as well as time for free writing)

-Rewrite our obits (optional -- what do we wish they said?)

-Share our obits/rewritten obits and discuss how writing our own obit helps us reflect on our lives and our legacies and perhaps inspire us to reprioritize our lives in an effort to live more fully. Can we hold on to these obits for a year (or more) and revisit them as a way to see how we have changed? Sharing is always optional!

It’s taken six years, but Brian Feldman (Best Performance Artist, Washington City Paper Best of D.C. 2018) is finally bringing the project that started it all to the District. And not to just one venue, but all 8 Wards.

Unlike anything ever seen in D.C. history, The Feldman Dynamic: 8 Wards of Chanukah is an unprecedented reality theater event featuring a family – Brian Feldman’s actual family (Mom, Dad, and sister) – celebrating Chanukah together live on stage. There’s no script, no rehearsal, and every performance is completely different. It’s not improv. It’s the reality show that will never be on TV.

The performance features potato latkes, jelly doughnuts, dreidels, and chocolate gelt, takes place all eight nights of the holiday (December 2-9), and travels nightly to a different venue and D.C. Ward – in numerical order:

Heart of the Ghost is an improvisational unit from the Baltimore/Washington area. Comprised of Jarrett Gilgore (Alto Saxophone), Luke Stewart (Double Bass) and Ian McColm (Drums), this group is the culmination of years of encircling orbits. Collectively encompassing a massive variety of interests and collaborators including James Brandon Lewis, Jaimie Branch, Tashi Dorji, and Dave Rempis. Themselves known players in the circles of improvised music, these three find common ground within their individual vocabularies: an aim to deconstruct and reshape canonized creative tropes into a new & stunning language.